STROLLING SCULPTURE ARRESTED IN RICHMOND

Andy Coppola's show was a hit in Italy and Germany. In Richmond, it was a bust.

Coppola is a performance artist who makes himself into "living sculpture" by adorning his body with paint and clay or by wearing costumes.

He launched his latest "performance piece" Feb. 5 by donning a colorful, head-to-toe outfit made of powermesh (normally used for swimsuit lining) and walking from his South Richmond home to Art6, the downtown gallery sponsoring Coppola's performance as part of its "Orlando Furioso" show.

Coppola was walking down the Second Street exit off the Lee Bridge about 1 p.m. when he heard an amplified voice ordering him to stop and show his hands.

"I couldn't see that it was a police officer," he said. "In this piece, I walk looking straight ahead with my arms folded over my chest. And I don't speak." He didn't respond to the order and kept walking. He heard a second order to stop. He stayed silent and kept walking.

A third order came with a warning. "I'll put a bullet through you," Coppola recalls hearing. "I saw in the periphery of my vision that it was a police officer. So I stopped."

"We had received a large number of calls about a suspicious person on the bridge," said Sgt. Harvey S. Powers, a Richmond police spokesman. "Several calls referred to him as a possible jumper."

Police and rescue units were dispatched to the bridge. Patrolman Christopher Jernigan, the first officer on the scene, decided Coppola "was a person we needed to have a conversation with," Powers said.

The artist's lawyer, Steven D. Benjamin, said Coppola was seized, pushed to the pavement and handcuffed by Jernigan, who then removed the headpiece of the costume.

At that point, Coppola said, his performance was interrupted, "so I could talk. The officer told me I was stopped for wearing a mask in public."

That's a violation of a state law originally enacted to combat the Ku Klux Klan.

"But it's not an outright prohibition," Benjamin said. Exceptions are made for Halloween, protective masks and "modified theatrical productions."

Once police realized what Coppola was up to, they realized his mask fell under the theatrical exception, Powers said.

But because he failed to obey orders to stop, Coppola was charged with obstructing justice -- a class 1 misdemeanor with maximum penalties of 12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine.

He's due in court on Feb. 24.

The 33-year-old artist, a Springfield native who studied sculpture at Virginia Commonwealth University, likened his appearance to that of "a flower by a Dumpster -- something that makes you take another look at the space."

He plans to walk through downtown, Shockoe Bottom and South Richmond on Feb. 27.

"The Milan police followed me for a while," Coppola said, "but I had never been stopped" before the Richmond incident. *